The present invention relates generally to tension measuring devices and apparatus and, more particularly, to such apparatus for measuring the prevailing tension in an elongate strand.
Various industrial operations in diverse industries involve the handling of strand material and, particularly, the transportation of such material from one operational location to another. As used herein, the terms "strand" and "strand material" are intended to broadly encompass substantially any material of an elongate indeterminant length such as, by way of illustration but without limitation, yarns, threads, filaments, ropes, wires, cables, tapes, ribbons, and like materials.
In many cases, the control of the lengthwise tensioning of the strand material may be important and even critical to the effective accomplishment of an industrial operation. For example, in the textile industry, the handling of textile yarns, filaments and threads during various stages of differing textile manufacturing operations can be critical to controlling uniformity in the strand material itself, the processing thereof, and the resultant quality of textile fabric and other goods produced from the strand material.
As a result, various devices are employed in the textile and other industries for regulating the tension in strand material during handling and other devices are utilized for quantitatively measuring strand tension to verify accomplishment of the desired tension control.
As technology has progressed, certain strand materials used in the textile and other industries have become increasingly fine and delicate, necessitating careful handling at heretofore unconventionally low tension levels. Disadvantageously, conventional tension measuring devices are characteristically ill-equipped to detect accurately the prevailing tension level in a strand within low ranges of tension, e.g., less than one gram of tension.